NYPD Investigating Claims By German Artists

As CBS 2’s Tony Aiello reported, not everyone thinks the pair should be charged.

“I like that about New York. I like that unexpected things happen,” Kristian Roebling said.

Roebling is one of millions who love the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s in his DNA. His great-great-grandparents Washington and Emily Roebling supervised the building of the bridge which was designed by Washington’s father John John August Roebling.

Leinkauf and Wermke said that they switched the flags early on July 22 to commemorate the 145th anniversary of German-born Brooklyn Bridge architect John August Roebling’s death.

“I think it is a beautiful and poetic resolution to something that could have been much more nefarious, and it wound up being a pretty artistic gesture,” Roebling said.

In a statement, the artists said they “were careful to treat the bridge and the flags with respect,” but they didn’t address potential criminal liability from the project.

They said they followed U.S. Flag Code in their handling of the American flags they removed and were returning them, but they have not said how or when.

The day the flags went up, NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller, the department’s counterterrorism and intelligence chief, said he believed four or five people scaled to the top of the bridge’s towers and swapped the flags in the dead of night.

Video footage of the security breach shows the people walking on the bridge’s footpath at about 3:10 a.m., and the light on the bridge’s Brooklyn tower flickers and goes dark about 20 minutes later, Miller said.

The same thing happens about 12 minutes later on the Manhattan tower, he said.

It’s not the first time someone has claimed responsibility for the flag incident. Previously, the “New Pot Party” claimed responsibility for the flag swap. A parody Twitter account also claimed responsibility for the incident.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Stephen Davis said that if the artists have the flags, “we certainly would love to have them back.”

Leinkauf and Wermke have scaled buildings, bridges and statues in a series of projects blurring the line of access to public works and spaces. In 2007, according to their website, they tied balloons to cables high above the Brooklyn Bridge roadway.

The German artists first made their claim of responsibility to The New York Times.